"What are you doing?"

Cormac's Irish lilt broke through the otherwise silent darkness of the barn.

It seemed he'd woken up.

"Nothing, apparently," I replied, slipping the pendant back into my trouser pocket.

"What was that?" he asked as he sat up and nodded towards my hip, where I'd just tucked the artifact out of view.

"Just something I found a couple of days ago," I told him.

I did consider that technically, I found it two hundred years from now, but since voicing that made me sound crazy, I stuck with a notion that felt equally valid in the circumstances.

"It looked valuable," he remarked, apparently having observed more of my crepuscular activities than I'd realised. "A piece of jewellery like that could fetch you a pretty penny, I'll wager."

"While that may be true, I've got no intention of selling it," I assured him.

"Why not?"

"Because it's worth more to me than money."

"I thought you only found it a couple of days ago?" he noted. "Are you that attached to it already?"

"It's not about sentiment," I explained. "Its true value wouldn't be reflected in its sale price."

"Which means ... you can see qualities in it that others can't?" he reasoned.

It was more because the artifact had showed me rather than because I could inherently see it. But the idea was close enough to the truth that I could get on board with it.

"I think it might be able to help me find my way home," I confessed in response.

Cormac paused, looking confused.

"Like a compass?"

"Something like that," I confirmed. "I just need to figure out how it works, first."

"I understand why you'd want to find your way home," he empathised. "But perhaps it would be easier if we tried to work out how to retrace your steps? Surely you must live locally, maybe in one of the surrounding villages, or you wouldn't have made it here on foot."

"No, there's no point," I sighed. "My home isn't somewhere I can get to by walking."

While my companion apparently pondered this, I swiftly reminded myself that at least I had a fixed abode, even if it currently felt out of reach. Cormac had nothing.

"Can I ask you something?" I continued after a brief silence. "It's about the fire."

"Aye, go ahead."

"What is it that makes you think the sidhe attacked your house?" I asked.

"Well, they're not exactly friendly, are they?" he pointed out. "And they're erratic. People say they're capable of anything."

"I wouldn't know," I admitted. "I wasn't sure they existed until last night, so I'll defer to your judgement on that front. The one we saw in here certainly seemed unpredictable. I didn't get any indication they were necessarily violent, but then, that was only my first encounter. You've had a lot more experience with the sidhe than I have."

"It's not just my experiences I'm drawing on," he elaborated. "Most folk do what they can to avoid upsetting the sidhe, because it's hard to predict the repercussions. I certainly don't think we can rule out aggression. Especially when it comes to creatures of magic."

"I totally understand why you'd be wary of them," I concurred. "The one that turned up in here shook me enough. But then, why you? What could you possibly have done to upset them?"

"Same thing that upsets everyone," he replied, with frustration heavy in his tone. "Perhaps you don't get persecuted for such things where you come from?"

I understood exactly what he was driving at.

Pursing my lips, I let out a long, slow sigh, ensuring that I chose my next words carefully.

"Just like in your community, where I come from, the Catholic faith has a significant influence on every aspect of our existence," I informed him. "Unfortunately, there have been various interpretations of the words laid out in the Bible, and not every version has fallen in favour of people like you and me. The topic of same-sex relationships has certainly been controversial throughout our history, but it's becoming more acceptable over time. It will be in the future here, too."

"You sound very sure of that," he noted curiously, and I briefly wondered whether I may have overdone my attempt to reassure him.

"I've been told I'm an optimist," I shrugged, throwing him a friendly smile across the small, darkened gap between us. "Those in power will always try to interpret the scripture to suit their own agenda, but I'm hopeful that, given time, your community will be able to find their own values in the holy texts. I like to believe that the overriding message of Catholicism teaches us that love is positive, and that we should be judged on the choices we make and not on who or how we love."

"It's a shame not everyone around here thinks the way you do," he mused.

"Yeah, I got that impression," I acknowledged gently, recalling the enigmatic conversation from earlier that day between Cormac and our host. "Mrs Doyle certainly seemed to believe that there were people in the village that thought the attack on your house was justified. Do you know why she thinks that?"

There was a pause, and I heard click his tongue quietly as he apparently pondered my question.

"Aye," he conceded. "I can give you a condensed version if you like."

Since he appeared to be seeking my permission to disclose information, and he'd decided to offer some transparency on the topic, I wasn't about to deny him the opportunity.

"I don't have anywhere else to be," I assured him, with a gentle motion of my hands to emphasise the point.

Shifting into a seated position on top of the hay bale, Cormac clasped his hands together and laid them in his lap, keeping his gaze lowered.

"I think it started when Mam and Pap tried to help me find a nice girl from the village to marry," he began. "When I told them I wasn't interested in girls that way, they gradually withdrew from the community. Maybe they encountered folk that were passing judgment on it. I wasn't told about it if they were. First I knew of it were the burning scarecrows that kept appearing on our property. Scarecrows with my likeness."

"Effigies?" I asked, horrified.

"Aye," he confirmed. "We assumed those involved would soon get bored and stop if we ignored them, but they didn't. It just got worse."

Anger surged through my veins at the cruel, atrocious behaviour these locals had displayed.

"In what way?"

"Well, then the attacks started," he confessed slowly, with a slight wobble in his voice. "At first, they threw stones at the house while shouting obscenities. Taunting me to step outside so they could watch me burn like their vile imitation dummies. It was terrifying."

Cormac raised a hand to his face, and despite the dimness of barn, I could see that it was to wipe an escaping tear.

There was no doubt I was deeply perturbed by the sinister events that were being disclosed to me.

It didn't take much in the way of shuffling to alter my position, and so I shifted over to his hay bale so that I could situate myself adjacent to my traumatised companion. Placing one arm tentatively around his shoulders, I tried to console him.

"That's awful," I insisted. "They had no right to intimidate you that way."

It sounded like a truly disturbing experience.

"It didn't stop there," he said, continuing to relay his version of events through his tears. "It got to the point where Pap couldn't let it go on. One night he got really angry and riled up about it. He said enough was enough, and he went outside to confront them. Mam tried to stop him, but he insisted he was going to put an end to their campaign. The banging and shouting got so loud..,"

As Cormac paused to try to steady his breathing, I could feel him shaking in my arms as he relived this horrific memory. Pulling his trembling body closer to mine, I offered what I hoped was a comforting embrace as he tilted his head slightly and resumed his account of the events.

"And then there was nothing. Just silence. Mam and I waited for Pap to come back inside. And when that didn't happen, we ventured out to find him lying on the grass with a huge gash across his head. He never woke up."

"They killed him?" I asked, astounded. "Presumably the police arrested the perpetrators?"

Cormac shook his head despondently.

"They claimed it was an accident, and there were no witnesses to contest it," he croaked, clearly choked up.

Released a long, slow, breath, I processed what he'd told me.

While it was entirely possible that the death of Cormac's father hadn't been premeditated, these reprobates had clearly not instigated their exchange with the family with good intentions. Homophobic attacks of any kind riled me, and even if this misdemeanour had been officially classified as a tragic accident, I felt there was an element of culpability that lay firmly on their shoulders.

"Did the attacks stop after that?" I probed.

Cormac nodded into my shoulder.

"What about your Mam?" I pressed gently.

"She died of a broken heart about a year later," he lamented.

Holding him tighter, I found myself releasing a melancholy tear of my own into his hair, empathising with him with regard to the suffering and anguish that this group of miscreants had left in their wake.

"You've been through a lot," I voiced, noting his lack of support network, and potentially even any conscious awareness that having one in place might help. "How have you been dealing with it all?"

"I started writing things down in an old book that Pap gave me when I was younger," he informed me. "I'd been using it to try to make sense of things. But now that's gone too. Burnt to cinders with everything else."

A diary.

Of course.

I remembered him insinuating when I read his journal that he used it as a type of coping mechanism. No wonder he was struggling to keep it together if his strategy for reconciling his emotions had been taken away from him, as well as his home and his parents.

I desperately wished there was something more I could do. It wouldn't be right to take the law into my own hands when the culprits had already been acquitted, and I was unable to return to Cormac that which he had lost.

However, there was a small thing I could commit to as we sat together in the darkness of the barn, rocking him gently and letting my tears roll into his hair while he wept silently into my shoulder.

"I'll do whatever I can to make sure you don't go through this alone," I promised him. "Including trying to get you a new book so that you can resume your writing."

Closing my eyes and holding him tighter, I felt him nod against my neck.

As another solitary tear escaped through my lashes, snaking down my own cheek and into his soft hair, I found myself resolute in my conviction.

I didn't intend to leave this century until I'd found him a new diary.